A 15-Year-Old Work of Gender Essentialism in the Age of #MeToo
One of the open secrets that has been stripped of its secrecy in America’s current moment of #MeToo reckoning has been the nature of the secrets themselves. The spaces they have occupied. The structures that have allowed them to flourish out in the open for so long. The fact that women have been living in a world that has been built, in general, by and for men. Hollywood, pop culture, mass culture: by men, for men. Electoral politics, down to the notion of political charisma itself: by men, for men. Advertising. Manufacturing. Medicine. On and on. You see man made the cars / To take us over the road. Man made the train / To carry the heavy load. Women, in all that, in workplaces as in so many other places, have been made to do the thing women are so often made to do: adjust. Adapt. Make way. Make do. This is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing—nothing—without.
